He darted into the adjoining clothes-lobby, returned with the garment. The hall was empty; the door still open. She had gone. He ran out and down the drive after her, crying her name: “Christine! Christine!” There was no response, neither sound nor sign of her. She had vanished. Bitterly disappointed, he returned to the house, closed the door behind him. As he went into the clothes-lobby to replace the unneeded coat he was startled by the telephone bell. He hastened to the instrument, picked up the receiver. “Hallo!--Yes--Yes--what is it? Who are you?--_the police_?” He repeated the last word in a tone of bewilderment, listened. “Yes,” he replied, “Yes--Mrs. Christine Arkwright--yes--that is my wife--yes----” The silence of the empty hall seemed to envelop him as he listened. He interjected an impatient exclamation. “Yes!--you found a letter and traced me--yes!--Go on!--What is it all about?” He frowned, contorted his face as though the distant voice was not clearly audible. “What?--what do you say?--died suddenly?--I don’t understand.--Where was this?” He nodded as though now receiving more intelligible information. “No--I don’t recognize the address at all! What sort of place is it?--oh, a second-rate boarding house. Well, I think there must be some mistake--what?” He listened again. “No,” he persisted categorically, “I say I think there must be some mistake. You say that a Mrs. Christine Arkwright died suddenly in a second-rate boarding-house--at that address I don’t know--and you’ve traced me out--I quite understand all that. But I say I have good reason to think there is a mistake somewhere--it couldn’t be---- What?” He smiled with a grim superiority as he listened. “What?--You say there’s no doubt of the identity?” His brows puckered suddenly in the frown with which he prepared the annihilation of a stupid and stubbornly insistent witness. “Now, pay attention, my friend!--When did this event occur?” He asked the question in the tone of one confident of establishing an impossibility by a counter fact. There was a moment of pause--and then his expression changed. “To-night?--_At eleven o’clock?_” The clock in the study struck, discreetly, twelve. FROM THE DEPTHS